It's never been easier to get noticed if you're in a certain kind of band. All you need is a name (preferably something summery, with escapist connotations), a MySpace page and some vintage stock photos of boats or lank-haired girls eating ice cream. Next, make some simple-sounding, 60s-girl-group aping indiepop seemingly recorded at the bottom of a well, send your songs out to the right music blogs, and before you know it, you're an internet sensation, part of a hip new scene.

Except that it's not as easy as it looks. As with all emerging scenes, this new wave of woozy indiepop has its fair share of pretenders, and to become one of the bands getting noticed this summer takes skill, an acute ear for melody and an obsession with the weather.

One of the most blogged-about bands of the past few months are LA-based duo Best Coast. Their excellent debut album, Crazy For You, practically screams "play me at a BBQ" – all surf guitars, booming Be My Baby drums and Bethany Cosentino's sweetly creaking croon. For her, the weather is a vital part of the Best Coast sound: "It's a lot easier for me to work and write music in Los Angeles because we have great weather. It's a lot harder for me to feel creative or inspired when I am somewhere where it's cold and grey."

Tennis, a duo from Baltimore, are the latest band to feel the warmth from the blog fraternity. Their debut single, Marathon, manages to capture the spirit of early Phil Spector productions, but with a dreamy, melodic pop edge that would melt the most cynical of hearts. Made up of husband and wife Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore, Tennis the band was formed after the pair got bored of working, cashed in their savings and brought a boat. "We were in a tropical climate, spending most of our time outside for close to a year. All of our music channels that," says Riley. "When we actually wrote and recorded our music, we were experiencing our first winter in almost two years, which made us very nostalgic for summer."

It's this sense of nostalgia that adds another vital element to these bands' music. Perhaps it's a tinge of sadness that best sums up this new wave of bands; it's summery, but there's grey cloud on the horizon. Certainly, the somewhat mysterious Summer Camp (they're actually made up of Jeremy Warmsley and Elizabeth Sankey, but answer as one entity), seem to think so: "We love the bittersweet feeling you get during those long days just hanging out with your friends – the fact that no matter how great a time you're having, there's a sadness because you know it's not going to last forever."

It's apt, then, that the band should use vintage shots of American proms from the 1970s to package their music. That and their name immediately lend their songs a wistful sense of carefree innocence. For Tennis, their use of pictures of sun-drenched yachts and poolside scenes are more of a necessity than a calculated move, as Riley explains: "There is certainly a way to have band photos taken that don't appear contrived and pretentious, but we haven't figured it out yet. We would rather use images of things that represent us."

For Best Coast, the artwork is all about Bethany's beloved cat Snacks, but look closer and a map of her equally beloved California can be found. Oh, and Snacks is superimposed on to a beach, obviously. It makes you wonder what will happen to them all come winter time, but for now let's just enjoy the sunshine.

Crazy for You by Best Coast is out now on Wichita. Young by Summer Camp is out on Moshi Moshi on 6 September. You can hear Tennis at myspace.com/tennisinc